"There's a lot of confusion about Windows Vista these days. Many online discussion forums have a great number of users who express no desire to upgrade to Vista. Sure, we've all seen the screenshots and maybe a video or two of Vista in action, but for many it only seems like new tricks for an old dog. Yeah, it's got some fancy 3D effects in the interface, but OS X has been doing that for years now, and it's still Windows underneath, right? The sentiment seems to be that Vista is another Windows ME. Perhaps part of the problem is that people just don't know what Vista has in store for them."

I personally don't care much about the next Windows version, I stopped using Windows a long time ago not only because of technical problems and security concerns, but also because I didn't feel free: free to tinker and configure my working environment the way I like, free to install software without having to worry about oppressive EULAs, free to dispose of my data as I wanted (without being tied to certain applications), and so on.

Sure, the "free as in beer" side of things has had, and still has, its relevance: the simple fact that I can download one ISO image of Linux and install it on as many boxes I like still impress me when I think of it (in the 80's things were different ...).

Even now that Windows has reached decency with the XP version I still feel uneasy when I have to work with it (sometimes I have to). So it doesn't matter how much eye candy, technical prowess and computing qualities Microsoft puts into Vista, that's a no go for me anyway, anytime.

That's about the same reason I started using FreeBSD at home. I wanted to be able to get rid of annoying stuff that comes standard with the Windows install.
The only way XP has been bearable was because of being able to create a custom install cd with nLite.

You can use most open source software on windows, in case you didn't realize that

What has that got to do with the original post ?
The guy was saying he wanted FREEDOM, not FREE BEER.
He wanted to be able to do, what he wanted, how he wanted, in whateverway he needed, with the system.

"You can use most open source software on windows, in case you didn't realize that "

Thank goodness one can use some FOSS software on Windows. This does at least offer people who are game enough to risk running on the vulnerable Windows platform at least some interoperability with other platforms.

Here are just a few examples: one can use OpenOffice.org or Abiword on Windows and gain document format interoperability thereby. One can download and use Inkscape for Windows to support viewing and creating SVG format files. Adobe offer for download a generic postscript printer driver for Windows that lets Windows users print to a networked CUPS printer. Ghostscript, Ghostview and GSview offer tools for PDF and postscript support that Windows itself lacks entirely. And so on.

I believe there is a codec for Ogg Vorbis for Windows Media Player available from third parties, even though Media Player itself makes the claim that Ogg Vorbis is not supported and refuses to download a codec for you. http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Vorbis_Ogg_ACM.htm

The common theme here is that Microsoft themselves offer absolutely none of these cross-platform interoperability solutions. There is absolutely no interoperability offered by any of Microsoft's own client-side products.

Can you spell "lock-in"? (Or at least recognise the blatant attempts at lock-in).

Huh? It's your reply that makes no sense to me. First of all, I made some points and you're not replying to all of them: so if you're talking about "reasons I give to switch to Linux" to dismiss them please try to answer to all of them.

Second, and most important, all the applications and utilities I use under Linux are free as in beer and as in speech, while when I used Windows my software consisted of a mixmatch collection of free software, freeware, shareware and proprietary software. Now I can enjoy (and sometimes suffer because of a free environment, from the OS to the last applet in my panel. Can you do the same under Windows? I don't think so.

evey app I use under windows other than VS.NET is OSS. Gaim, xchat, openoffice2, celestia, you name it, all opensource, it is very possible to use nothing but OSS under windows, the only reason I continue to use VS.NET is because no OSS dev environment comes close, but there are even alternatives for that. It's all about choice

Can I use XMMS, Evolution, and Gnome-Terminal under Windows? I use these all the time.

Silliness aside, many people simply prefer working in Linux. It's a better environment. I would never go back to Windows after having gotten used to both the robustness of Linux, the administrative freedom, and the joy of Gnome.

"all the applications and utilities I use under Linux are free as in beer and as in speech, while when I used Windows my software consisted of a mixmatch collection of free software, freeware, shareware and proprietary software. Now I can enjoy (and sometimes suffer because of a free environment, from the OS to the last applet in my panel. Can you do the same under Windows? I don't think so. "

I can use pretty much all of the softwares available under Linux on my Windows (actually, I *do* use all of the softwares I just listed, with the exception of Visual Studio that I prefere instead of Eclipse).

So I can use 99% of all the softwares available under Linux. But then I can get Windows specific application if I chose to (in my case Visual Studio), because I have more freedom than under Linux.

Your other points are valid. I was only talking about your argument on having "free softwares" under Linux and not Windows.

If what this article states has been done, Vista will indeed be a major step in the Windows life cycle. I'm confident, that if they get all this done, the so called war between "Linux vs Windoze" will be won by Windows for the majority of users without any problem at all.

It seems someone has actually spent time thinking in MS. Now they've also chosen to do with Direct X what Linus has done with Linux. Skip backwardscompatibility and do whatever....

I'm really tempted by Vista, but terrified about what might be in the EULA and their software (such as reporting back what you have on your HDD).

ONe thing I am absolutely certain of however, is that the next 3 years will be all about how X-environments is struggling to get a similar UI....

the next 3 years will be all about how X-environments is struggling to get a similar UI....
I hope not. Unless you're talking about hardware accelerated support, I don't want to end up with a Windows GUI. I think KDE with its customization is far better than what MS offers.

What's more, the effects in Compiz seem to be more.. well.. normal than the ones in Vista. That's not to say the Compiz effects are in any way perfect, they still have a long, long way to go.

I just get the impression that Vista's effects are more for attracting users than long term benefit or usability... Also, being that all this Xgl/Aiglx/Xegl/Compositing stuff should be speeding up the computer, it's surprising that it seems to be increasing the hardware requirements on Windows.

I think the main reason Aero Glass is increasing hardware requirements is Microsoft's eagerness to lock users in to a new version of Direct X.

Of course as always most sales of Windows and Office are with new computers, so its always in Microsoft's interest from a business standpoint to try to drive more computer sales. Otherwise they won't be able to support all the other divisions and products that won't ever turn a profit, like the Xbox.

what is more a hack? XWindows with server side hacked acceleration, or an approach that enables a full use of gpu carachteristics from drivers up, in the context of a stable api gearing more and more towards scene/effects description and which development is directly supported by hardware makers?

the article point was "you know, there's more than wishtles and bells". if you didn't read/got it, please resist the temptation of commenting just because you're allowed to.

What's more, the effects in Compiz seem to be more.. well.. normal than the ones in Vista. That's not to say the Compiz effects are in any way perfect, they still have a long, long way to go.

The Vista "effects" are not "in your face". The interface looks different but if you just take the effects then they are very usability friedly. I'd say use it first before making the judgment.

I just get the impression that Vista's effects are more for attracting users than long term benefit or usability...

Also, being that all this Xgl/Aiglx/Xegl/Compositing stuff should be speeding up the computer, it's surprising that it seems to be increasing the hardware requirements on Windows.

Well I've said it before and I say it again. Requirements are NOT for running the OS but for running an OS with applications. I have a A64 3200 with a gig RAM and a ATI x800 and latest Vista CTP runs very very fast. Faster than XP (I tripple boot Vista, XP and FreeBSD) and I would not be surprised if bedugging code is still in there.

Well... I have used Vista -- not on my system, however. I'm not in the beta test program. I didn't find the effects were that good for usability... the one where it layered all the windows in 3d seemed pretty useless, but who knows, maybe I'd grow to like them.

As for that hardware,... I'd expect it to run Vista very fast on that I have a ATI Radeon 9700 and 2.8GHz P4 with no plans on upgrading within about 2 years. The ATI site doesn't list 9700 as supported, but it lists 9500 and 9800 as supported (er.. odd).

What about a 256MB RAM celery with i810 graphics though.. I've seen Xgl+Compiz on that quality hardware (admittedly it took a while to get it working, but it's still not production ready). While a little laggy with some of the more intense effects, it seemed nippy in general.

In the final part of the article, the authors argue, that Vista is a dramatic upgrade of Windows, rather than a rehash.

I beg to differ. While I have no doubts that in general, Vista will be a fine OS, it is still just Windows (or a desktop OS for that matter). Improved kernel, improved visual design, improved multimedia capabilities and improved security - yes sure. But to me that is just evolutionary steps. After all, Windows does pretty much the same things that it has done for quite some years - just better.

But is there really anything that I cannot do with WinXP that I can do with Vista?

To me most of the exciting things happens outside the desktop OS. I love using Firefox (with all the plugins and experiments going on), social bookmarking & networking, wireless stuff, mobile stuff etc. And with gmail etc. its long time ago that my browser became my most important application.

I'm not fond of attacking websites that way without proof. First show us some proof, else this is just a flame. People need to realize that statements like this might HURT people writing articles/maintaining newssites.

I started reading this article hoping to get some technical information on new technologies provided in Vista. Unfortunately the author of this article, in an effort to make technical issues accessible to non-technical people, has distorted the facts to such a degree that it becomes impossible to determine if he is truly clueless or if he is just making stuff up.

For example:
The only solution, it is argued, is to redesign and rebuild the kernel with a focus on security and stability.

Well, that's exactly what Microsoft is doing with Vista. The whole kernel has been reorganized and rewritten to help prevent software from affecting the system in unsavory ways.

The notion that MS completely rebuilt the kernel is ridiculous. Such an endeavor would take too long, and be of very little use. I can only assume that he is talking about WDF, which is a new reorganization of the DDK. See http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/WDK/aboutWDK.mspx for more information.

After reading as much of the article as I could stomach (for some reason I kept rolling my eyes as he explained heaps), I read the author's bio. It seems that if he has ever done any software development, it was too insignificant to be mentioned there.

While I applaud the general approach of the article (Here is an update, here is why it matters), I feel that the authors inability to convey technical material in a simple manner without causing it to become fiction, destroyed the article's usefulness.

Actually, Microsoft did rewrite large portions of their code for Vista. The idea is that they took the very snappy and stable Server 2003 SP1 code base, stripped it down, rewrote any parts that needed rewriting, and then began adding Vista features/extensions.

Actually, Microsoft did rewrite large portions of their code for Vista.
Yes, I read that too. But just like the original poster mentioned, that wasnt large portions of the kernel. Network stack and driver kit yes. But Admin-Apps too.
AndyZ

And the whole graphics system, which is no little task. And if they succeeded (didn't try vista yet, but seems they did) they really built it the right way.
They did awful things with their earlier versions of DX, but were humble enough (and had resources enough) to learn the lesson from their mistakes and rebuild everything the rigth way.
As a graphics coder, I can assure you game developers are not using DX just because Windows drives the sales.
It's finally a good api (good != ugly) that relieves some pains and helps development.
If you read some developer papers about Vista gfx architecture, planning for D3D9Ex and DX10, you might see that there is a lot of goodness that can't be effectively built by hacking XWindows (eg resource sharing, GPU virtualization).

I'm not sure what exactly resource sharing and GPU virtualisation (planned for D3D9Ex and DX10) have to do with [rebuilding] XWindows system. That is a target for possible future extension or rework of Open GL API.

Actually, they did. I think what you are thinking of is "rewrote the kernel from scratch", which they obviously did not do. It's quite possible to rebuild and keep most of the existing codebase by restructuring and what have you.

What was wrong with what he said about heaps?

Where is the fiction? You pointed out one thing that you believe to be fiction, and it is not.

Sounds like a much needed improvement for Windows. I highly doubt its going to suck especially with all the reworking they have done on it. Will it have bugs? Sure. I'd expect that from an OS of this size and with this many features. But I don't think its going to be the end all of the OS. It might be great, it might be really good at what it was designed for. And thats what I'm hoping happens.

IMHO OSNews-Readers are not the target audience of this article. Its so over-simplified that it reads just like an advertisement straigth from Microsoft PR...
Oh, and Dashboard stole the idea from Konfab. Most interesting. And therefore its OK for MS to steal that idea... also most interesting.

Actually MS showed sidebar a really long time ago as a tech demo so it is NOT a recent idea and it you are gonna argue about stealing ideas tehn MS must've stolen it from the makers of Konfabulator NOT Apple.

The latest Vista is actually a mixed experience, some very good stuff and a few regressions. Casual users wont complain but for heavy file organizers like me it lacks a bit. Nothing ever felt as nice to use after Norton Commander. I know about Windows/Total Commander but they don't "feel" the same way, if you used Norton Commander you'd know that.

The average user will like Vista alot. The woman in the household liked the look at first... *say no more*... but then said she found the inteface better than XP (no she did not use the word interface).

I heard that was for the OEM version only. Which is what the OEM version was supposed to be in the first place - a new license for a new computer. Contrast that with people buying OEM copies of Windows with just a keyboard/mouse on the order.

More secure? More code = more possible points of failure. Secure operating systems are systems that only do the minimum required, and don't even contain code for anything else. Windows Vista is clearly in a different category. And while surely an important consideration for Vista development, I suspect waaayyyy more MS coders are working on features, built-in apps and eye-candy, than on making core components bulletproof. And I mean the 100%, not the 99,99999% kind of bulletproof.

Better performance? By what metric? I doubt it will run a present-day set of apps with better performance than currently used operating systems, on the same hardware. History often showed otherwise. With more powerful hardware, it's not important anymore for existing apps, and difficult to compare for Vista-optimised apps.

Hibernation and Sleep Mode - multiple low-power states an improvement? Not from a user point of view! Heck, some users have difficulty understanding the difference between 'power off' and 'standby'. And adding multiple low-power states is supposed to improve things? Seriously, this if fun for driver developers, to users it will mean nothing (except confusion).

We'll see when final releases are out. For me, Linux does the job these days, and Microsoft-supplied software is increasingly irrelevant. Vista won't suck - because I won't run it. And Vista will suck - because many others will.

So linux becomes more insecure with every kernel release and every distro release? Please, it's not that simple. You are correct that there are more points of failure, but that does not automatically mean it is more insecure by default.

I suspect waaayyyy more MS coders are working on features, built-in apps and eye-candy, than on making core components bulletproof.

What do you base that on? If nothing, why bother making such a substantial assumption?

We'll see when final releases are out. For me, Linux does the job these days, and Microsoft-supplied software is increasingly irrelevant. Vista won't suck - because I won't run it. And Vista will suck - because many others will.

He 'suspects' that "waaayyyy more MS coders are working on features, built-in apps and eye-candy, than on making core components bulletproof." Just as you suspect his suspicion to be untrue.
He never said you had to beleive what he said, and one more time he 'suspects'.

If you'd read you would see people on highspeed internet recieve the increase.

It's not really easy to do something like that with the FS, unexpected shutdowns cannot be avoid and are going to do some damage. Instead of living in a fairy tail of how to prevent it, they think of how to bounce back to it. Sort of how ext3 has journaling to bounce back from unexpected shutdowns and just how it does node checking on bad unmounts.

I don't know if you just asked why you should care about security or not..jeez.

I'm sure that Vista will crash a lot less, but there's a big price to be paid. The reason is that only people authorized by Microsoft will be allowed to produce driver code; without the correct digital signature, Vista will refuse to load drivers, and Microsoft has already said it doesn't plan to extend this privilege to the little guys and the hobbyists. This is part of a general lockdown to try to produce near-bulletproof DRM: any device you hook up to your PC will need to play by the rules of Microsoft and Hollywood. You can buy Vista, but Microsoft, not you, will decide what it will allow you to do or not to do.

Fortunately, many Microsoft customers are going to look at that and decide that XP is good enough.

A lot of people consider those superior to Creative's own drivers for various reasons (like http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/rear.php?language=en ). They worked quite well for me when I tried them, and it would be a shame if they were not available for Vista.

I wonder how well gamers will accept this when they realise starforce protected games won't run on Vista Practically all recent game copy protections rely on some custom drivers, while starforce is a special pain in the ass. It sets breakpoints on other drivers to block disk access during cd-check and similar nasty things against cd/dvd emulators and debbuger tools, but even that isn't enough (Daemon-tools 4 beats it).

Vista will be a significant evolutionary step from XP. This is great for Windows users who represent an overwhelming chunk of computer users globally. Microsoft has invested much resource into ensuring Vista looks great. In my mind, for the most part, they have succeeded.

I still feel Microsoft focused too much on glamor and "eye-candy." I like both as much as the next geek. However, it seems the user interface of much of Vista has actually become more complex and inconsistent albeit beautiful.

While visual aesthetics are appealing, I do not believe they are a replacement for form, function and usability. Vista applications look more and more like web applications as opposed to applications that are an extension of the desktop environment or OS.

If I was a Windows user, I'd certainly to excited about Vista and looking forward to using it. If not for anything, for the new networking stack and the graphics subsystem. My problem with Microsoft and their products is that they never ever utilize open frameworks or standards, their licensing scheme is absurd and their business practices are appalling.

I have stop and laugh sometimes at the claims and posts on this thread. People are claiming the author of being 1. paid off by MS and 2. a MS Fanboy.

If you don't like Windows... Cool.. If you love Windows... Cool..

I think the Author, Regardless on your biased opinions, was just trying to show that MS is FINALLY maturing in security and needs.

I think a majority of you guys are Anti-Fanboys. Which is fine mind you. But it gets tiresome that EVERY news post about MS or Windows has to have 100+ flame posts about how "MS made my dog die" "MS is causing the depletion of the OZone" etc etc etc etc. You have a useful comment or observation than post but to post with pitchfork and torch in hand hunting the monster, it's tiresome.

I personally think MS is moving in the right direction. ok so some of you can't upgrade to recent hardware, then stick with what YOU like, be it Win2k, Linux, CP/M.. But please please please stop calling people fanboys when you are guilty of the same on the opposite side of the fence.

I believe in open standards , open source or not, that's the reason why vista is not for me.

I think the above statement is what it boils down to for the anti-MS crowd. It doesn't matter how good Vista is - even if it was 100x better than what is actually released, and 100x better than anything else, they still wouldn't use it unless a) The CD/DVD in which it comes on includes the source code b) They can legally get it by paying $0 for it, or c) All of the above.

So, no matter what features it has or lacks, it's going to suck no matter what. They'll find something to hate about it, even if their only real gripe about it is that they can't freely modify/distribute it. That's fine if that is what you think .. just say so and shut the f**k up already.

It's kind of like what Chris Rock says .. usually, when a guy is being nice to an attractive lady, what he is really saying is "Hey, want some d**k?[/i] Same thing with the open source crowd. When they say "I don't like the UI" or "Who needs xyz feature", what they're really saying is "it's not open source, so I must convince others not to use it in any way I can, because OSS is the only true path to God and anything that's not open source is immoral. Open source and free love, baby ... YEAH!!"

"I think the above statement is what it boils down to for the anti-MS crowd. It doesn't matter how good Vista is - even if it was 100x better than what is actually released, and 100x better than anything else, they still wouldn't use it unless a) The CD/DVD in which it comes on includes the source code b) They can legally get it by paying $0 for it, or c) All of the above."

Yet another idiot who can't make the difference between open source and open standards. Too bad...
For example, proprietary Unices were all based on open standards, and that made competition between different vendors possible.
Microsoft almost only uses closed standards and file formats, which hurts competition and locks it's customers.
I believe in competition, free markets, because it's one of the only ways to bring prices down, period.

Vista and Microsoft Office are/will be using proprietary formats and standards, there's no reason for me to pay to lock myself.

"I think the above statement is what it boils down to for the anti-MS crowd."

You have utterly missed the point here.

Wooooooooooossssssshhhhhhh. A million miles over your head.

Microsoft products and Windows go a long way out of their way to avoid any support at all for interoperability and open standards.

"Interoperability and open standards" has precisely nothing to do with Open Source Software. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Squat.

They are like orthogonal vectors, man.

A lack of "Interoperability and open standards" has everything to do with an attempt to lock customers in.

If you are a Windows customer, and you do get locked in, that is very bad for you. It is also at the same time very good for Microsoft. It is also at the same time very bad for people who don't want to be locked in, and who therefore use open standards and other platforms - because they can't interoperate with you.

Then again if you are a buisness and you are locked in to Microsoft products, that too can be very bad for you because there could be many potential customers who can't interoperate with your systems, and who therefore won't do buisness with you.

So in summary: bad for other people, doubly bad for you, good for Microsoft, and you get to pay Microsoft for the 'privilege'.

I'll judge the usability of Vista based on its performance in a corporate/enterprise setting and it manageability. Not on how pretty the desktop looks or how many crappy builtin applications it sports as I disable those anyway.

Lets hope I have to work around less "slipups" than I had to when deploying XP.

Does anyone else think the scheduler outlined in the article is a bad, bad idea. Caching certain applications into RAM depending on what time of day and day of the week I use them isn't terrible useful at all. Personally I hate when the OS makes choices like this for me. The author glossed over a lot of the details, but things like that turn me off of Windows completely.
Another one is the whole priority scheduling. If I want my peer to peer app to use the full CPU, I'll just run it normally. If I want it's threads to have a lower priority, I'd do nice --adjustment=19 in Linux.
I know I am not in the target audience of Vista, but either way the whole loss of control bugs me.

Digital rights management + microsoft having a tighter grip on my life + the usual rants made me leave for ubuntu one year go. Sure it looks better than XP now, but that's not making me come back.

I'm tired of applications that do not cooperate with each other,
computers gaining a "personnality" after some time,
clicking "yes I agree leave me the f--k alone",
defragmenting,
being locked out of software updates,
using a brain-dead memory model that uses the swap file with an empty gig of ram,
having one more tray icon for whatever application thinks it's important enough,
and feeling that everything I can and cannot do is determined by some elite.

Well, I usually consider DRM and trusted computing more or less the same, I forgot to mention TCPA. That's scaring me too. But then a (somewhat) concrete example is buying a tune from a DRMed store, then, you have not bought it, you have licensed it, and you have restricted "rights" on it. So when in 30 years you still want to access that thing but already made x backup copies and they all went corrupt, what can you do? Go to Jerusalem find a vynil record?

Of course, I'm also following the hypes of evil={"DRM","TCPA","corporations that get a little too big"} etc. As a user, I have difficulty telling you how it's affecting me, because personnally I can go in my living room, rip an old CD lying there and not worry about it putting some rootkit on my computer either, and I will be able to burn it again as many times as I please.

So, basically, Microsoft has not affected me directly. The FEAR of DRM "made me leave", that's the only way I can think of it.

....no wait, I have a more concrete horror story. One of my friends sent me an email a few months ago, let's call that friend "Bill" (note: the conversation was translated):

Bill: WTF I'm listening to music in winamp that comes from my ipod and other places, and at the same time, Firefox opens this page at random intervals: http://drmlicense.one.microsoft.com/pdrm/fr/welcome.asp?challenge=A...)%5cAmar%5cBibil%5cParis%5cMott+the+Hoople%5cThe+G reatest+Hits+%5bBonus+Tracks%5d%5c10+Saturday+Gigs.wma&emb edded=false
Bill: WTF it comes from my ipod!
Me: uh oh I guess I never talked to you about DRM huh
Bill: WTF
Bill: but it comes from my ipod!
Me: come to linux, we have cookies

You should be mad at the RIAA/MPAA then. They are the ones pushing DRM in media so hard.

And as far as making copies... that's a fair rights issue that needs to seriously be addressed in court. Again, that's not something Microsoft really has much (if any) control over.

I just don't get why this is causing people to not even want to try Vista at all. It's something that will likely not affect most people at all, and for those who it does affect, it means they might be screwed out of some money if they make too many backup copies and they all happen to go corrupt. Yes, it sucks, and again it needs to be addressed in court. But how does that affect the rest of your experience with Vista?

It seems to me like some people (not saying you) treat DRM like Microsoft is going to completely control what you do and yourn computer if you use Vista. Paranoia taken to the extreme.

As far as your horror story... well.. I didn't think iPods could play DRMed WMA. That's um.. odd. But in that case, it sounds like some sort of bug. Horror story, yeah. Microsoft trying to control your friend, no.

Me and everybody I know that runs GNU/Linux have waited long enough for a suitable desktop system for Linux to come out, but it never happened. We'll be moving to Vista and using Linux as a server. It's a shame that Linux didn't progress.

I skimmed the article and I see some updates that are exactly what Gnome and XGL are doing but don't look as good.
The media player will never be as good as Amarok etc. They do have better memory/window/application management which KDE sorely lacks but is coming in a few months with Plasma. Also KDE/Plasma goes beyond the simple desktop gadget to fully integrate the widgets into the taskbar for a more fluid UI.

Still defragmentation and closed kernal with registry.
The security system, although nice of course, cannot compare to the massive opensource offerings.
Sorry, 'catchup candy' with broken security that's government/corperate controlled.
OpenGL will not run natively with Vista but in a managed wrapper, which I think is counter intuitive.
Bah!

Plus as I read, allot of computers will not even be able to take advantage of the 3d desktop unlike OpenGL's XGL which you can use only bits and pieces of at a time not having to render the entire desktop 3D.

Clearly Vista is not meant for the majority of OS News readers. Vista is for the bulk of the working population, these days a computer is like buying a TV, what matters is that it does the job and looks good, which I think is fair enough.

passing judgement on a BETA product is like trying to predict when an earthquake will occur and where. Just keep an open mind, MS is trying to improve its OS and thats a good thing.. lets just take a "we'll see" attitude on this until its release.

How does it matters if it sucks or not? Even when XP was... lay man still continued to used, only smart people moved to Linux/Mac.
Well if Vista is really going to be good and secure.. i'm glad to welcome it to the market.. cause this will help Linux to raise its own standards... Its own performance standards.. and may be soon Linux will also have eye candy application!

For a home OS that is supposed to be used by people who know very little about their computer, why on earth do you still have to defragment the drive? A tool to auto-defragment is nowhere near as good as a filesystem that doesn't need it at all!

The rest of the changes look good, though not earth-shattering. They really emphasise how far Windows XP is behind both OSX and linux.

It's hard enough now with just two editions of XP to get whoever you're helping over the phone to figure out which they have. Now with six editions that'll be even more fun. It will also be more fun when you have to buy a retail version online and you have to figure out what in the world edition it is and if it's actually a good deal or not. 3-4 editions I can kind of understand, but 6?!?!? Stupid MS and their anti-trust editions.

...who cares until all we get is more or less stable, more or less feature lacking builds ? I'll only believe my eyes, if it's good, no analyst can talk me out of it, if it sucks, none of them will be able to sell it to me. But talking about why or why not will it suck... pure pointless nonsense. That's all folks.